Little Fish
by julads
Summary: A frank and lunar assessment on parenting, courtesy of Stan Marsh.


This is a birthday fic for the lovely MadTuna, one of the sweetest people I've ever met, who I also recently learned has the same birthday as me! So Happy Birthday, MadTuna, I hope you have a wonderful birthday!

* * *

It was on a normal evening (it always is, isn't it?): I was in the kitchen making dinner, and Kyle had just gone out to get the mail when he came back shouting, "Stan! Stan! You're not going to believe this!"

At first I thought it was something bad – that's where my mind always goes – so I must have looked scared when he stumbled back into the kitchen panting and holding a glowing white envelope.

"Look!" he said, thrusting the envelope in my face and smacking the seal with his index finger. It was green, in the shape of a flower, unmistakable.

I looked at him, my brain almost too hesitant to connect the dots. His eyes were impossibly wide, a jubilant smile encroaching upon the corners of his mouth.

"Look at the seal!" he said.

"Well, open it! See what it says!" I finally managed to say, and then I had the sense to grab a knife, which I handed to him, barely breathing as I watched his shaking hand open the celestial envelope.

Holding the envelope in his left hand and the letter in his right, he swallowed, breathing hard as he read:

Dear Stan and Kyle Marsh:

It is with great joy that I write you today to inform you that the Celestial Goddess has selected you to be parents! She will visit you at 1 a.m. on March 9 to deliver the child. Be ready to welcome your family's new addition into your home!

Warm regards,  
The Celestial Council

Then he looked up at me, that smile growing on his lips.

"That's it?" I asked. "That's all it says?"

His eyes fell to the letter again, and then he flipped it over, but there was nothing on the back.

"Yeah," he said breathlessly. Then in a voice cracked with emotion, he said, "Oh my God. We're going to have a baby."

He threw his arms around my neck and said it again and again, becoming more excited each time. I held him by the small of his back, barely able to think, let alone speak.

Then he moved away from me, his eyes confused. "What's wrong? Aren't you happy?

"I –" I began to say, but I had no idea what I felt right now. "Let me read the letter."

It was exactly as he had read, of course. The text was neat and geometric, pretty generic, but the paper was something else. It felt warm and soft on my fingertips, like a blanket. I took the envelope and ran my finger over the seal, waiting for the moment that I'd start jumping for joy too, all the while having this feeling of dread that I wouldn't. And I didn't. Because I was terrified. I was twenty-three years old and still felt like a child myself. How could I possibly be a parent?

Kyle looked crushed. It made me feel horrible. "You're not happy?" he said in the saddest voice.

"No, no, I am. It's – this is great, really," I said quickly, forcing a smile. "I just need a minute."

I sat down at the kitchen table and read the letter over again and again. While that did help it sink in, the result was that I only felt more worried. It wasn't just my crippling fear that I might be a bad parent; it was a lot of things, practical things we'd never discussed because we didn't expect this to happen so soon.

"I don't want to fuck this up," I finally said, feeling so torn, totally unable to give him the reaction he wanted.

"Why would you fuck it up?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I just – I don't know. I feel like…" I shook my head, knowing I had to give him something more to latch onto: "I think it'll be… okay? It's not that I don't want to have a baby – I mean, I wouldn't have filled out the application if I didn't – it's just that I wasn't expecting this to happen so soon."

Before he even said it, I knew exactly how he was going to respond: "Well, that's just how it is sometimes. The Celestial Goddess picked us to be parents now for a reason. You can't argue with that."

"I'm not," I said calmly. "I just don't feel ready, is all. I mean, first of all, how are we even going to do this? One of us is going to have to stay home and take care of them."

Even as I was saying that, the answer emerged in my head, and the uncomfortable look on Kyle's face only confirmed it.

"Well," he began, "we could get by with just me working."

I could tell just by looking at him that that had been the plan all along, and frankly, it kind of annoyed me. It was true I didn't make that much money as a carpenter, and it was also true that we could get by on just his income. But I liked my job. I found it gratifying to use my hands to make things I was proud of. The thought of not having that anymore made me really unhappy.

"Or we could put them in daycare, I guess," Kyle added, but it was obvious he didn't like this option and wasn't suggesting it seriously. Not that I really wanted to send our child to daycare. There just wasn't a perfect solution, and it made me anxious and uncomfortable. Our lives had finally fallen into a synchronous rhythm after the hassle of post-secondary education, and now a massive wrench was being thrown in it. I didn't mean to question the Goddess or make Kyle unhappy; I just felt sort of helpless, and I needed him to understand that, but I couldn't find the words.

What he told me next helped though: "It's going to be fine. We have three months to figure it out." He came over and touched my shoulder. "And you're not going to fuck up. There's no one who would be a better parent than you. I say that with absolute conviction. So, sorry, but your doubts are baseless on that front – you're just far too compassionate to be a bad parent."

Maybe. I didn't feel convinced, or any less preoccupied, for that matter. And though in the month that followed, I was able to share Kyle's excitement at times, occasionally daydreaming about our child myself, I only felt increasingly frantic as the walls of my life contorted, gone from white to blue, submerged beneath an ancient sea.

Kyle had a dot of paint on his cheek and sweat on his brow as he worked, stretching his arm out to push the paint roller across the wall. I stood there watching him, my back against the last unpainted wall, not reading a parenting magazine I had in my hands.

"This is going to look so good," he said for the third time, the delight in his voice palpable. "Look how fucking good this blue looks! It's going to look amazing once we put the fish on the wall."

He had found these wooden antique fish online and bought a bunch of them, claiming they were a sign because our child was going to be a Pisces. And so the nursery was to have an underwater theme. Well, not just underwater, but under an earthen sea, those massive bodies of water that were far bigger than their dry lunar namesakes. Kyle, who was not an artist, was painting a mural. I knew it was going to look terrible, especially with these wooden fish, but I wasn't going to say anything about it. He was too into the idea.

Suddenly, Kyle said, "Ooh, I know! What if we got some star paint and added ripples? Like, as an accent? Fuck, that would look great."

So, we went back to the hardware store the next day. Kyle was very excited as we went down to the Interior and caught the train to the next sector over, where they had a mall back up on the surface, a thirty story building with lots of commercial businesses. When we arrived, Kyle was delighted to find the same employee that helped us previously. He smiled and greeted us, but I could see this look in his eyes that was like, "Oh, great, they're back." Kyle didn't pick up on this, of course; he just launched into a spiel about his ripples idea. Only then did it occur to me that I wasn't even sure if there were ripples underwater.

Anyway, Kyle spent the next two hours deciding between "Periwinkle Dust" and "Cerulean Supernova."

"You know a supernova is when a star like, dies, right?" I told him when he was first considering the color. "Isn't that kind of inappropriate for a nursery?"

"Oh my god, Stan, they just named it that for the alliteration. Don't be such a killjoy."

"I'm not," I muttered, although maybe I was. I didn't really know why I needed to comment in the first place. Maybe because the idea of our child being associated with death was totally absurd. There was a reason green was associated with children, after all.

It wasn't like me to interpret things like that as "signs" like Kyle did, not that he interpreted things that way in an honest manner. Well, let me explain: it wasn't that he didn't believe that, say, he was meant to buy some 70U bottle of Chartreuse because it was the last one on the shelf. He did believe that, one-hundred percent. Because he wanted to buy it. And if he framed his expensive purchases as divine prophecy, then he was just letting fate run its course. I didn't know why he even felt the need to do this when he was a working adult, but I did know that he probably wouldn't be getting signs to buy French liqueur and cashmere sweaters after the baby was here.

But about that paint color, which Kyle fortunately decided against: I knew that death wasn't "real," but I guess us humans would just always be afraid of it. But maybe what we were really afraid of were the transition periods between spiritual and corporeal existence. But in that case, birth had to be scary too, and yet it wasn't treated that way at all. I guess because even if being born was hard, it was worth it to be united with your parents again.

That was when I finally felt it in my bones: that we had always been parents; our child just couldn't join us on the moon until we were old enough to take care of them. I knew that before, of course; I just didn't really feel it until now, out here on a walk before bed, alone on the periphery of the wide, gray sea we called home. As I looked up at the thousands of stars twinkling in the blackness of space, I felt so heartbroken thinking of our child, still a spirit, tugging on the Goddess' robes and begging to reunited with us. I remembered how I'd been so fretful, feeling like I wasn't "ready," whereas our poor child had already waited twenty-three years to be with us again.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered to the heavens, feeling like I might actually cry. I didn't though; I just gazed into the vastness of space as I felt something growing in my chest. At the time, I thought it was just love. But even then I had the vague awareness that it wasn't quite like any love I'd felt before. It was a love so profound and eternal, a feeling that I'd do anything for this person. And while that was true for Kyle too, this felt different somehow. I couldn't explain it then, and honestly, I still can't.

* * *

Of course, Sheila was over our house a lot. This concerned me, because I had a feeling she'd be over our house even more once the baby came. It wasn't that I didn't like her (obviously); it was just that she stressed me out sometimes, and her and Kyle together definitely stressed me out. They had always communicated in a very intense manner, because they were intense people. It was the polar opposite of how I interacted with my mother. Anyway, the reason this worried me so much was because we had decided that I would stay home with the baby, and, since she was constantly lecturing Kyle about childcare stuff, I knew it wouldn't be long until I became the main focus of that.

"Wait a second," Sheila said so suddenly that I looked towards the living room. (I was in the kitchen making cookies.) "What are you going to do about milk?"

"Oh," I heard Kyle say. "I guess I forgot about that."

"Ack!" Sheila cried out. "For the Goddess's sake, Kyle, how did you let this slip your mind?! The baby's going to be here in less than a month!"

"Hey, you forgot too!" he protested.

"It's your baby! You can't expect me to remember everything!"

"Well me neither! Stan forgot too!"

I rolled my eyes, really hoping I wouldn't get roped into this.

Not as loudly, Kyle said, "Listen, it's fine. We still have time; we'll just have to start looking, like tomorrow."

"It should've been the first thing you did when you got that letter," Sheila said disapprovingly.

They fought about that some more, until Sheila said, "Fine, Kyle, I don't care! Do whatever you want! Just don't come crying to me when you need help!"

"Fine!" he said. "I don't need your help anyway! Me and Stan'll be fine on our own!"

They bickered a little more before she finally stomped out of the house. At this point, I had an actual headache. I knew I should go take something for it, but I just kept standing here in the kitchen watching the cherry shortbread cookies bake.

Not ten seconds later, Kyle came into the kitchen, fuming. "Did you hear what she said?!"

"Yeah," I said, going over to rub his shoulders. "She's wrong, dude. We're going to be fine."

"Well I wish you would've come out and said that instead of hiding in the kitchen," he muttered, though I didn't feel he was truly faulting me so much as just expressing frustration. He once told me that there's no one who gets under his skin quite like his mother.

"I think we need to figure out a way to get her to back off a bit," I suggested. "Otherwise this is just going to get worse once that baby gets here."

He let out a sarcastic snort. "Like that'll work."

"It's worth a try, don't you think? Maybe send her an e-mail and explain that it makes you feel like she thinks we aren't smart enough to figure this out ourselves."

He seemed to consider this before sighing and saying, "Well, we did forget about the milk. So maybe we aren't."

"Yeah, but so what? That's something extra we have to worry about anyway. Most people don't have to. She didn't. So it's not fair for her to act like we're so awful for forgetting."

"Actually, yeah. Yeah! You're right," he said, which made me feel good. "She can go fuck herself."

"And we still have plenty of time," I added. "Everything's going to be fine."

My whole life I'd been telling Kyle that, even when I didn't really feel it. Sometimes hearing myself say it helped; other times, it just made me feel like a liar. Right now, I wasn't sure which it was. While I had a good feeling we'd be able to find a celestial hound within a month, I was still apprehensive about everything else, especially Sheila. When I thought about Sheila and Kyle bickering on top of having a crying newborn, I felt sick to my stomach. I was going to have to figure out how to convince Kyle that he had to tell her to back off. It was just that sometimes it seemed like he didn't really hear me. I don't think that was his intent; I just think sometimes he got so wrapped in his own worries that he forgot other people have theirs, too. Although maybe I wasn't giving him enough credit, because he could also be very good at assuaging me. I just felt stupid about having to spell it out to him when he didn't, which I guess was really my own problem.

But anyway. Now we had the problem on our hands of finding a celestial hound. Frankly, I had no idea how we'd forgotten about this. Maybe because we didn't know any other gay men who were parents, or because it was rarely discussed in the media. It was a unique burden for gay male parents to go out and find one of these dogs, who you then had to convince to deliver milk every day for the first three years of your child's life. These hounds, which ran wild across desolate areas of the moon, were once earthen creatures that Earthlings had sent up in rockets and satellites when they first began exploring space. Oftentimes, they never intended for the dogs to survive, and so now their celestial spirits roamed the moon, howling with melancholy into the starry night. It was really sad. It felt wrong for us to ask them for three years of free labor, though it was also unfair that we were in this position in the first place just because we were men. So I couldn't help feeling a little resentful, and then even more so as we started researching and discovered how tedious it was.

There were a bunch of techniques people used – meditating, using a special call, praying, just sitting around waiting – but it was all anecdotal; there weren't any statistics on this or anything. Well, it was Kyle who said that, and it was true, of course. So now we were both even more apprehensive. Kyle must have said, "I can't believe we forgot" or something like it at least a hundred times that night and the next day, and as we drove out past the edges of Mare Serenitatis that evening, I felt like I was going to scream if he said it again.

So I was really fucking grateful that the next thing that came out of his mouth wasn't that.

"I don't see anything," he said tightly, tapping his fingers on his jaw as he looked out at the rough lakebed.

This was almost funny – if he thought a celestial hound was going to pop up right in front of him the moment we made it into Lacus Somniorum, well, he was going to be disappointed.

"Yeah, well," I began, though I didn't really have anything to say. "Just keep looking."

"I am, Stan. That's how I know I don't see anything."

I turned on the radio and flipped through the stations to find some nice instrumental music that wouldn't distract us. But after finding some piano, Kyle said, "Ugh, I'm not into this," and then turned to some electronic pop stuff, which he always justified liking by saying, "I know it's crap, but sometimes you just want to listen to crap, you know?"

Anyway, that was what we were listening to now, until about thirty seconds later when Kyle suddenly slapped the radio off and said, "Shit, Stan! We're not going to be able to hear anything with that on!"

"Oh fuck, you're right."

Grumbling, he cracked his window open and said, "Goddess, we'd better get our shit together before the baby comes."

I chewed the inside of my lip. He was right. We were going to have to start thinking about a lot of things differently. It's not like you could just forget a baby for a few minutes. For the past two months, I'd been sort of correlating it to having a dog, because that was the closest thing I had, but obviously it was different. Dogs could be okay for a while by themselves, babies, no way. And with me being the one at home, I especially had to be on top of things. If I didn't, then… Well, I wasn't going to think about that. Instead I just focused on the road and the gray lake that surrounded us.

We drove for another forty-five minutes, mostly not talking. Kyle did say something akin to "I can't believe we forgot" three or four more times, to which I said "yeah" or nothing at all. Honestly, I was tired. I had spent the whole day sanding a bookshelf, and my arms felt floppy holding the steering wheel. Doing this tomorrow and every day until we found a hound was really going to suck.

Randomly, Kyle said, "That looks like a good spot."

There was a small ridge out where he was pointing. Besides that, it was a relatively flat area, as good a spot as any other. I pulled over, and we got out of the car and walked out to the ridge. It was absolutely quiet. Kyle was looking over to his left, and I did too. There was nothing out there except miles and miles of basalt.

"This is such bullshit, you know?" Kyle said, but there wasn't anger in his voice, just fatigue. "Like, how come we have to do this? It's not fair. And fuck my mom for throwing such a fit about it. God. If I ever do that kind of crap to our kid, please just slap me. Actually slap me. It's screwed me up so bad, the way she is. I have a lot of anxiety from it."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Don't be," he said. "Just don't let me do it to our kid. Because I'm afraid I might."

"Okay."

Honestly, now that he was saying this, I was kind of afraid he might too. He just freaked out so bad when things went wrong, almost like he couldn't contain his reaction. That said, I saw that as an anxiety thing, so even though it did have the effect of stressing me out too, I couldn't blame him for it because it did seem to help him process things. This got me thinking more about the effect Kyle would have on a child. It wasn't that I thought he would be a bad parent, or that he was out of control or anything; it was just that he was the kind of person who really… I don't even know. Maybe I was just being an asshole. He'd just told me not to let him act like that towards our child, so he clearly had more self-awareness about his behavior than his mother did.

When we got to the ridge, we dusted off the ground and sat down, just looking around, breathing, thinking.

"We could spend the night out here tomorrow," I suggested. "Sleep in the car, drive back in the morning."

Scowling, Kyle said, "I guess."

I started to worry about what would happen if we couldn't find a hound. That was all I did for the few hours that we sat there, our backs against each other's as we stared into the distance. I just worried and worried. I'd have to look up what you did if you couldn't find one. Surely it must have happened to somebody else. We couldn't be the only dumb gay idiots out there.

Lost in my woes, it took me by surprise when Kyle suddenly stood up, destabilizing me. "Well, guess we're not getting lucky tonight," he said with a tremendous sigh as he dusted off his corduroys.

"I'm too tired to drive," I told him. "You have to, I'm sorry."

He said "whatever" in a weak tone that meant he really didn't care: sure, fine, he'd drive.

On the way back, I struggled to keep my eyes open, determined to continue scanning the empty lake for a starry canine. It was almost midnight. All I could think about was passing out in bed. Even getting changed and brushing my teeth felt like too much work.

The mini-mart just before Mare Serenitatis was coming up again, its blue-gray lights harsh in the sleepy night.

I was surprised when Kyle pulled into the parking lot. "I want one of those apple things," he muttered as if he were confessing to a crime. "You want anything?"

"No thanks."

While he was gone, I sat there and closed my eyes, not really thinking about anything. Then, all of the sudden, I heard this anxious, quick tapping on the window. I jerked upright, alarmed, and saw a tiny cluster of blue lights on the hood of the car. It knocked on the window again, and as my eyes focused on it, I saw that it was a celestial… creature. It wasn't a dog though – it was very, very small, only slightly larger than a mouse. But it wasn't a mouse. It had a round head, long arms, teeny little hands just like people hands, with fingers and everything. It was totally bizarre. The way it moved was strange too, hopping along the windshield in this bouncy, childish little way. I had no idea what the hell I was looking at.

The sound of an incoming text barely registered in my mind. I just kept staring at the thing, unable to move. But then I got a phone call, and that was somehow enough to drag me out of my trance. I still couldn't look away from the creature though, which had even begun to speak, saying, "Hi? Hello?"

"What the hell is that thing on our car?" Kyle's voice rang through my ear.

"I… don't know," I said slowly, still staring at it.

Then, the creature flew. It soared off the hood of the car, leaping over to the front of the mini-mart, where Kyle was. He shrieked piercingly, right in my ear, and then sprinted over to the car, nearly tripping as he threw himself against the door and scrambled inside.

Panting, he looked out the windows in absolute terror, but the creature seemed to have vanished.

"What the fuck was that?" he asked wildly.

"Some kind of celestial… animal, I guess," I gradually said. "I'm not sure."

Just a second or two later, I saw that blue light out of the corner of my eye. And there, at the top of the windshield, was the creature's little round head, upside down, staring at us.

Kyle shrieked again, pointing at it. "There it is again!" he yelped.

"I'm a squirrel monkey," the creature said in the sad voice of a little boy.

Hearing that voice made me realized how ridiculous we were for being afraid of this thing.

"Oh. Um," I said uncertainly, speaking to the creature. "So you're a celestial…squirrel monkey?"

The tiny animal slid down the windshield, stretching its little body across the glass and pressing its face up against it.

"Yesss. I'm Goliath," he said. "I've been following you."

"Oh? All night?" I asked.

"Yesss," he said again, not like a hiss but in a sing-song way, as if he found it fun saying all those s's. "I was hiding from you."

I briefly glanced at Kyle, who was leaning as far back in the seat as possible, literally cowering from this tiny creature.

Speaking to the monkey, I said, "Well, um, it's nice to meet you, Goliath. I'm Stan, and this is Kyle, and we're going to have a baby soon, so we've been out looking for a celestial hound."

Goliath slinked down to the bottom of the windshield and then hopped over on top of my side mirror. He pressed his hands to the window and said, "Lemme in? Please?"

So I opened the door a crack, which prompted Kyle to lunge across my lap and grab my arm. I looked down at him. He looked up at me, wide-eyed, not saying anything. Then his eyes veered away from mine, and he jerked back just as suddenly as he'd come forward, clinging now to the door as I felt something soft and warm on my head.

"Oh, God, it's on your fucking head," Kyle said quickly, almost whispering.

I felt Goliath roll down my shoulder and chest and fall into my lap, where he held his little feet in his hands and said, "I like you."

"Aww," I said, reaching out to pat his head. He laughed and clasped my finger, rubbing his forehead on it. He was so cute! "I didn't know monkeys could be so small."

"It's okay," Goliath said. "Squirrel monkeys are little. And I was only a baby when I died, so I'm extra little."

That was the most heartbreaking thing I'd ever heard in my life.

"I'm sorry," I heard myself say, the words somehow devolving into a whisper.

"Hey! No crying!" he said forcefully, not that I was going to.

Then he crawled up to my shoulder and hugged my face, his arm reaching across my upper lip. "I like you. I want to go home with you. I'll get milk for your baby, okay? Okay, good. Let's go."

"You can do that?" I asked. "Even though you're not a dog?"

"Yesss."

Finally, Kyle said something: "I've never heard of anything other than a celestial hound delivering milk."

"It's okay," Goliath said. "I can do it."

Kyle looked so suspicious it was almost comical. Not that I was really convinced myself, but it was just sort of funny how he was looking at Goliath like he was trying to pull a fast one on us.

"Well, sorry, but I can't just take your word for it," Kyle said. "This is my baby's food we're talking about."

"Yesss," Goliath said again. "I'll get the milk. Okay? Good. Let's go."

"Have you ever done it before?" I asked Goliath.

He looked down and counted on his little fingers, then held up both hands, all ten fingers spread wide. "Twelve times," he said.

"That's only ten," Kyle muttered.

"Twelve," Goliath argued, hopping over onto the stick to show Kyle his ten little fingers.

"That's ten! Ten fingers!" Kyle snapped, sounding kind of nuts.

"Because that's all I have!" the monkey cried.

"Fine, whatever," Kyle said dismissively. "Anyway, that's not very much experience. Haven't you been dead for a thousand years? What've you been doing all this time, huh?"

"None of your beeswax," Goliath said with a cute little snort, then he scrambled back to me and whispered in my ear: "I was playing."

"Aww," I said. "That's okay; you're allowed to do that."

"What did he say!?" Kyle asked, nearly barking.

I gave him this look like, "Maybe chill a bit, please?" But he just demanded, "Tell me what he said!"

"Dude, relax. He just said he's spent some time playing over the years."

"I am fucking relaxed!" Kyle shouted, adding, "As relaxed as a person can be when his vehicle's been infiltrated by a celestial monkey!"

Now Goliath was on my other shoulder, maybe hiding from Kyle.

Scowling and grumbling, Kyle folded his arms across his chest and glared. "I'm not entrusting my baby's well-being to a monkey that can't even count," he said with finality. Then he fumbled around in his pocket and got out the car keys, which he shoved into the ignition, saying, "Say goodbye to your little monkey friend, Stan. It's time for us to go."

"Hold on. How do you know this isn't one of those signs you're always talking about?"

He narrowed his eyes even further. "Because it's not."

"But how can you be sure?"

"Because it's supposed to be a dog, Stan! Jesus! If anything, this is a bad omen!"

Goliath spoke up and said, "Noooo, monkeys are lucky!"

"I think that's true, dude," I told Kyle.

"Oh, are you a monkey expert now, Stan? Because in that case, you'd know they don't deliver milk."

I chewed the inside of my cheek, not really sure what to say.

Quietly, Goliath said to Kyle, "Please listen to me, okay? Please don't be mean, okay?"

"I'm not being 'mean'," Kyle said, sounding mean. "But fine. Go ahead."

"Okay," Goliath said, his voice a bit more serious now. "There are lots of celestial animals, not just dogs. Did you know? There are squirrel monkeys and chimpanzees and fish and turtles and rats. They sent all kinds of animals into space," he explained. "But most of us don't want to be around people anymore. Because they hurt us. That's why it's just dogs on the moon. They still miss people."

After a moment, Kyle asked, "What about you then? Why are you here?"

"Because I like it."

"Aren't you still mad at humans?" Kyle pressed him.

"Not anymore."

Kyle threw his hands up, groaning, then dropped them to his head and began tugging on his curls. "Why do these things always happen to me? How come nothing ever goes my way? Am I cursed? Is that it? Have I been cursed to a fundamentally absurd existence?"

I tried telling him that we were very lucky to have found a celestial creature so quickly. Kyle's response was to cover his face and moan in agony.

"Oooh, God, I'm going to have to tell my mother," he wailed.

Well, that might be a problem.

"It'll be okay," I told him, rubbing his shoulder. "We'll just tell her what he told us. Maybe we can even find some stuff online about celestial animals that aren't dogs. It'll be fine, Kyle, I promise. Everything's gonna be okay."

Then in my exact same tone, Goliath said, "Everything's gonna be okay."

Kyle glared at him between his fingers with one eye.

* * *

So we ended up with a pet, kind of. Not that Goliath was really a pet, but he was a little animal that was living in our house now. Kyle wasn't into this. Celestial hounds didn't stay with the family, but then, Goliath wasn't a celestial hound. Another part of it was that I think Kyle was jealous of Goliath, because I already loved him a lot. He would sit on my shoulder and whisper funny little things in my ear that would make me laugh, like, "Kyle looks like a clown" or just "I farted." That pissed Kyle off of course, but then when Goliath asked him if he wanted to hear secrets too, Kyle told him to write them down and then said, "Oh that's right, you can't! Because you're a monkey! You can't even count!"

The morning after that, Kyle woke up with a Post-It note attached to his forehead that read:

YOU ARE A POOP  
NO KISS FOR YOU

So anytime Kyle was mean after that, Goliath would say to him, "No kiss for you!"

Then Kyle would shout back that he didn't want gross monkey kisses anyway, and so on and so forth.

Once in a while though, Kyle was actually nice to Goliath – not just indifferent, but nice – I guess when he kept in mind the fact that we were depending on Goliath for the livelihood of our child. We had read a few cases online about non-canine celestial animals, and so Kyle became begrudgingly receptive to the idea, possibly in part because he didn't want to go back and hunt for a celestial hound. But the real turning point for him might have been when he told Sheila about it, who naturally flipped out, and so Kyle had to defend Goliath to her. And after that fight, Kyle was enraged enough to email her a long screed where he basically told her to stop imposing her judgment on our lives, because our life was not her life. It was a huge relief to me that he finally did that, although deep down, I also kind of knew it was as useless to tell her that as it would be to tell Kyle. Judgment was in their blood.

So, Kyle became defensive of Goliath by proxy, interpreting any kind of skepticism about him as a personal attack on our lives. This happened again just a few days later when the social worker came to do the home study.

When we answered the door, the guy standing there looked nothing like what I expected. He was tall and immaculate looking, wearing a suit with a scarf that seemed extremely gay and extremely straight at the same time, his blond hair slicked back – he looked like he belonged to the corporate world, not Family Services.

Kyle and I glanced at each other, no doubt thinking the same thing.

"Is this the Marsh residence?" the man said. "602 Usov Lane?"

"Um, yeah. Yeah it is, sorry," I quickly said, moving aside to let him in.

"My name is Gregory Haywood, and I'm the social worker who's been assigned to your case," he said, giving me his card before stepping inside.

Goliath was hiding somewhere, but certainly not for long.

Kyle gave me this look like, "What the fuck is this?" He was probably expecting the social worker to be a frumpy woman in a cardigan or something. Kyle felt threatened by attractive people, especially those who gave off an air of superiority. This time, of course, he just bit his tongue and awkwardly said, "Er, welcome to our home, Mr. Haywood."

"Gregory," Gregory corrected him coolly, not looking at him. Then he said, "Let's go over some things before I look around, yes?"

I knew this guy was pissing Kyle off, so I took over, leading everyone into to the dining room, where we sat at the table. Gregory sat across from us, opening his briefcase and taking out a file labeled "5324 — Marsh." Then he took out a pair of reading glasses, which he swiftly put on before asking us to confirm some information. Then he began asking us questions about our home and family and stuff, all info we sent in when we first applied to be parents after getting married. Finally, the moment we had been dreading came:

"So, I assume you've made arrangements with a celestial hound by this point, correct? May I ask their name?"

Kyle and I exchanged a brief glance before I swallowed and said, "Goliath."

Squinting, Gregory leaned forward slightly. "Goliath?"

"Uh, yeah. That's his name."

"I've never heard of a celestial hound named Goliath," Gregory said.

Then Kyle spoke up: "That's because he's not a celestial hound," he said. "He's a celestial squirrel monkey."

"A what?" Gregory said, still squinting at us as with piercing skepticism.

"A squirrel monkey," Kyle repeated firmly. "They're little monkeys that lived in the rainforests on Earth. The Americans and the Russians sent them up into space – it wasn't just dogs."

"I'm aware," Gregory said absently, looking through his briefcase for something.

"Well, anyway," Kyle went on, beginning to summarize the story of how we encountered Goliath, then going to go off on a tangent about how Goliath's rocket was blown up only 35 seconds after launch.

Gregory was looking at something on a tablet now, probably only paying Kyle a vague fraction of attention. If Kyle even realized that, it certainly wasn't enough to make him stop.

"Non-canine celestial hounds are highly unusual, as you're no doubt aware…" Gregory said, a hint of judgment in his tone. Kyle sucked in a breath. "That said, I do have some data on this 'Goliath.'" He extended his arms to show us on the tablet. There was no photo, just a blank image along with some basic information, his name, death date. Gregory scrolled down to the reviews, the first of which seemed okay based on the number of stars, the second of which wasn't so good. At the very bottom was "58%" – Goliath's rating.

"Let me see that," Kyle said, taking the tablet before Gregory even assented, which was totally rude but oh well. I leaned over to read it too.

The first review, from thirty years ago, said this:

"He was okay, kind of cute. He liked to sing songs for our baby, and he was pretty good about bringing the milk, although sometimes he needed reminders. He basically moved in with us too, which we weren't expecting. Occasionally he would cry if we didn't pay him enough attention, but we just had a baby so I'm not really sure what he expected. In retrospect, that was actually pretty terrible because it happened a lot. All in all though, he was pretty okay. Not great, just okay."

The second was pretty awful:

"This monkey can go f*ck himself. Okay yes, he did bring our baby milk for the past three years…except the times when he threw random temper tantrums and we were forced to coddle and beg him to DO HIS F*CKING JOB. I swear on the Goddess' tit these have been the longest three years of my life…I can't even read the word 'twinkle' anymore without hearing him sing 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' in his stupid little voice. Also he basically moved in with us, and when he got mad he'd throw a fit and break sh*t, which, let me tell you IS GREAT FUN ON TOP OF A CRYING BABY! This monkey is a nightmare. He should f*ck off back to Jupiter and leave milk delivery to the celestial hounds. And I've definitely told him as much, but I don't think he ever will because he gets way too much amusement out of being a little shit to people. F*CK YOU GOLIATH!"

In a wavering voice, Kyle said, "Are these the only the reviews?"

"Yes," Gregory said, hands folded, elbows on the table.

"He told us he's done it twelve times though," I managed to say.

"Well, not everyone leaves a review," Gregory said. "Also, the data only goes back about a century."

"So what was the point of showing us this? To give us skewed data so we'd have another thing to worry about? And how do I know these people weren't influenced by anti-monkey bias?" Kyle remarked, pushing the tablet back across the table.

"The data isn't 'skewed'; it's an average of the individual ratings. And while it's true there's little you can do about it at this point – unless you decide to go looking for a hound, of course – it's protocol to show the parents the reviews."

I guess part of the problem here was that we had called Family Services a few weeks after getting the letter, so this was the soonest appointment available. Still, I wondered what other couples did when they learned their celestial creature had an abysmal rating. I didn't ask about this though, because honestly, my impression was that these two couples just didn't get along with Goliath, which was exactly the case with Kyle. So I tried to say that, but now Kyle was trying to argue with Gregory about their review system, which was totally unhelpful, so I tried to get him to stop by redirecting the conversation towards literally any other topic. This didn't go over so well though: Kyle was fixated on "anti-monkey bias" and was only further incensed by Gregory nonchalantly saying things like, "I suppose that's a possibility."

Finally, in a very professional tone, Gregory said, "Ultimately, Mr. Marsh, you can choose to interpret these reviews however you wish. My job is just to show you them. Now, let's move along, shall we?"

As Gregory asked us a few more questions, Kyle was plainly ticked off, sitting there with his arms across his chest and giving bitchy answers when I failed to beat him to a question. Throughout the rest of that conversation, I thought I caught the occasional waft of something that smelled good, but I guess I figured it was Kyle or Gregory or something? I didn't pay it much attention, but a few minutes later when we began the tour and went into the kitchen, it suddenly made sense.

There was a huge mess all over the counter: broken eggs, spilled floor, and baking utensils all strewn about. And of course, there was Goliath, floating near the oven, which was on.

"The cookies are still baking!" he said as if he were scolding us for the intrusion.

I ran over to the oven and saw strands of batter dripping down from the top rack. Some of it was actually baking, but most of it had accumulated on the transparent layer above the coils and was beginning to burn. I shut the oven off and looked at Goliath, who was now shouting, "Hey! What'd you do that for?"

"Goliath," I said, looking at him exasperatedly, "this is not how you make cookies. Don't use the oven without telling me. It's dangerous, and—" I was about to say "you might hurt yourself," but I didn't know if that was possible, so I said, "Now you've made a huge mess that we're going to have to clean up."

"Oh…" Goliath said in a small voice. Then he began to sniffle. "I just wanted to make cookies for you guys!" he wailed, which made me feel a little bad but not so bad I wasn't still pissed.

In the background, I heard Kyle mutter, "Jesus Christ." He and Gregory were just kind of standing there watching this happen. I was pretty embarrassed that we'd come in here only to find Goliath doing the same crap he was criticized for in the reviews.

Sighing, I weakly said, "That was very sweet of you, but if you don't know how to do something, you have to ask for help. You've made a terrible mess in here."

"But I thought I did know!" Goliath wailed. "I watched you so many times!"

"Okay, well, you forgot some things, so next time, we can do it together and I'll show you how, okay?"

By now, Kyle was stomping over, and I cringed in anticipation of what he might say.

"Monkey!" he declared, one hand on his hip, using the other to wag his finger at Goliath. "You better clean up this mess! That's a big part of cooking, you know, cleaning up the mess. If you want to make treats for people so badly, you better like cleaning up after yourself too!"

Goliath was wailing even harder now that Kyle was yelling at him. Then I made the mistake of glancing at Kyle uncomfortably, who then said, "Don't look at me like that! You can't just let things like this slide! You have to make sure he knows he screwed up!"

"I think he does, dude," I said.

Goliath had floated down to the floor and was sobbing now, howling in anguish.

"Oh, great!" Kyle said, throwing his hands up. "So now I'm the bad guy, huh? That's nice; that's real nice. I mean, excuse me for wanting him to know it's unacceptable to dump batter in the oven, right? I'm such a jerk for laying down the law, right?"

"No, you're not," I replied, torn between wanting to comfort Goliath, to get Kyle to stop, and to immediately begin the work of scraping the batter off the oven. In the end, I found myself looking over at Gregory, who was gazing at us with this peculiar, unaffected expression, saying nothing as he stood in the doorway. With a sigh, I said to Kyle, "Finish the tour without me. I have to get this batter off before it cakes."

Kyle turned his nose up, jaw tight. "Fine," he said, and then he turned on his heel and left.

Once they were gone, Goliath quieted somewhat, but was still crying on the floor in front of the oven. Sighing again, I went to get a knife, a metal spatula, and the garbage can, cringing as I examined the state of the counter. What a nightmare. That second review rang through my mind.

I guess at some point we'd have to talk to Goliath about what he did to those people. No, scratch that, I would.

After removing the racks from the oven, I began scraping the bottom, holding the trash can up to collect the bits of batter.

"Goliath," I said, in a voice that was neither soft nor stern, "please stop crying. I'm not mad at you. I just need you to help me clean up."

"Okay," he murmured in a trembling voice. He didn't move though.

"Goliath," I said again, and after that, he slowly hovered over to the counter and began to clean up, first picking up the eggshells and putting them to the trash, then plugging the sink and filling it up with warm water, where he began collecting the kitchen utensils. As I watched him, it occurred to me that if Goliath was going to stick around, he could probably help out with the baby in some ways. Not that I would ever, say, leave him alone with them, but Goliath could like, I don't know, fetch things for me or help out with other stuff. I guess I'd have to think of things. Even now, I still didn't feel that he was going to be a burden – or maybe I was determined for him not to be. Maybe I saw part of myself in this tiny monkey, whose heart was in the right place but who fucked up sometimes. I guess that was why I didn't have it in me to chew him out over this, as unhappy as I was. Besides, the batter came off pretty easily, whereas some of the things my dad had said would stick to me for the rest of my life. I thought back to what Kyle said about smacking him if he ever acted like his mother, and I wondered if this were an example of that. I bitterly wondered if it was inevitable, which disturbed me, because in that case, maybe it was inevitable that I'd end up acting like my father.

But no. No, I'd never do that. I wasn't like him.

Just before I got the last of the batter off the oven, Kyle and Gregory came back and Gregory said goodbye. I expected Kyle to come in the kitchen afterward and tell me what else Gregory had said, but he didn't, so Goliath and I finished cleaning up. Then I hugged Goliath and reminded him not to do things like this without asking. I felt that he really was sorry. Afterwards, we went to find Kyle, who was sitting on the couch in the living room, not saying anything, just staring out the window with this dreary look on his face.

"What's up?" I said to him. "How'd the rest of the home study go?"

"He said we should consider taking parenting classes," Kyle said in a gray, defeated tone, not looking at me.

"Oh. Um. Okay? Is that it?"

Kyle closed his eyes, his expression strange, almost a sneer. "He said it because of me, Stan. He thinks I'm a crazy person."

"Aww, that's not true," I said, instantly sitting down next to him and touching his arm, though he jerked away from me.

"Yes, it is."

"I mean, did he say that?"

"It was obvious," he said.

"I don't think so," I replied. Then I had a life-saving idea: "Maybe he just said that so we'd be more on the same page with um, discipline or whatever?"

He gave me a drab look. "That asshole hated me as soon as I mentioned anti-monkey bias." After saying this, he let out a long groan that devolved into a bitter, incredulous laugh. Finally, he shook his head in disgust.

"Well, so what?" I said. "Fuck him. He can think whatever he wants. That doesn't make it true."

Kyle seemed to consider this. Then his eyes veered to Goliath, who had been sitting quietly on my shoulder.

"Did you clean up the kitchen?" Kyle asked me.

"Yeah," I said.

"Sorry," Goliath said in a little voice, almost whispering.

"Do you think I'm crazy, monkey?" Kyle weakly interrogated him.

"No."

"Do you hate me?" Kyle asked. "Because you probably should."

"No, I like you. I like your hair."

"Ah-huh," Kyle said dryly. Then he slapped his knee as he stood. "Well, there you have it folks – another fool won over by the catastrophe that is my hair."

Kyle left then, probably to get a bath, and I just sat there on the couch for a while with Goliath. Maybe all this time I'd kind of been thinking that being a good person automatically made you a good parent. And while I did still think that was a part of it, I also was starting to get the impression it had this like, I don't know, skill component to it, like working together with someone on a project. That said, I didn't think Kyle was going to be a bad parent, just like I didn't think he was a bad husband. In all honesty, I think we balanced each other out in important ways, and I told him as much when I got in bed later, trying to say that it was good to have somebody who laid down the law, because if he were just like me, our kid would probably end up getting away with tons of shit and turn out to be an asshole. I may have belabored this point a bit, using Cartman as an example and really trying to hammer down that it wasn't a bad thing to be strict sometimes, because you're trying to mold your kid into a person who respects other people and their things. At some point as I was going on, I heard his breathing shift. He had fallen asleep.

It wasn't as easy for me to fall asleep, which was weird, because I'd always had a pretty easy time, unlike Kyle. But I'd been having a lot of nights lately where I couldn't stop thinking about baby stuff, sometimes hearing Sheila's voice in my head, my thoughts spinning out anxiously. Everything was centered around March 9, the day that approached faster than I'd ever felt time move before. February just blinked away. I looked up, and it was March, then I looked again and it was the eighth. Just like that. If I looked back, I could see time stretch out properly in all the things I did to prepare – quitting my job, finishing the crib, having that dramatic baby shower – but as we sat here waiting on our back porch, it was unbelievable to me that the time had come so soon.

It was just me and Kyle out here – our families had their faces plastered to the kitchen window, watching us. My dad gave me a goofy grin and a thumbs-up when I glanced over my shoulder, which I responded to with a weak smile. I couldn't stop my leg from shaking. Kyle was staring fixedly at the sky, refusing to look at anything else. I could see how harshly he was breathing, his chest rising and falling with these deep, concentrated breaths, like he had to do that to keep himself from hyperventilating. He was anxiously tapping the glass table with his fingertips, which was almost kind of funny, as if he were at the deli rapping on the glass to passive aggressively communicate that he was annoyed with the wait. That had happened once, of course. And probably other times I wasn't there.

I looked up at the sky too, identifying the constellations to distract myself, using The Big Dipper to find Leo. The Flying Fish was gone by now – our little fish was finally arriving in the flesh. I swallowed hard, breathing through my nose, wondering what they would be like. Withdrawn and shy? Vivacious and artistic? Either way, a combination of me and Kyle was going to be a very special person, I knew that much. I was excited to meet them, but I was also so fucking nervous I'd puke if I thought about it too hard. My leg shook even more violently. Kyle put his hand on my knee, the one he'd been tapping on the table with. The gesture was firm, almost severe in its stillness. He didn't look at me. His expression was absolutely grave. It was silent now, just the sounds of us breathing in the soundless night. I couldn't interrupt it by asking him what time it was again. It was probably almost one, if I had to guess.

Funny how everything felt so slow now, when before it all went by so fast. I folded my hands over the table and continued staring at the sky, eyes darting across the dome of space, looking for something white. Time crawled on, and eventually I had to get up and pace again, otherwise I felt like I was going to lose my mind. I made a concentrated effort not to look at our house, although I could see Sheila's beehive out of the corner of my eye, and that wasn't great, so I sat back down.

What felt like a decade later, Kyle suddenly grabbed my shoulder and said, "Look!" His arm was outstretched, pointing to the sky, and my eyes flew in that direction, stumbling amongst the constellations until I saw it: a fuzzy whitish-blue sphere far up in the sky, far out in the distance. It was a sparkling, shifting blob of dust that seemed to struggle to settle on a definitive shape. Eventually, it morphed into a door that was rounded at the top. Then, the door opened, revealing a light that was so bright, brighter than even the sun. We had to look away, but out of the corner of my eye, I could see that brightness lengthening, morphing into what looked like a descending pathway. Upon it, a shining figure strode. It could only be the Celestial Goddess.

The path continued to grow, its brilliance fading to a soft blue as it came down towards us. It was then that I was able to see the Goddess in increasing detail: she wore a shimmering white gown, and her long blond hair floated behind her, as if underwater. She was looking down at a white bundle she carried in her arms, and though I knew it was our baby, the reality of it was slow to register in my mind. All I could really was the miraculous scene that shifted before my very eyes, becoming both realer and stranger as it continued. Then, she was right before us. I was somehow standing now, facing the Celestial Goddess and blinking almost robotically as I struggled to orient myself before her divinity.

"Um. I, um. Hi," I said foolishly, the words falling right out of my mouth. Then I dropped to my knees and lowered my head in deference and apology, because that was horrendously rude and now I was really embarrassed.

But the Goddess just laughed, a joyful, masculine laugh that rumbled through the world like gentle thunder. "Hey, man, get up, you gotta sign for this delivery," the Goddess said.

"Oh, Jesus," Kyle fretfully muttered, and then I heard the scraping over the chair on the concrete as he stood up and hurried over to us.

With shaking, floppy legs, I somehow managed to stand up again, mumbling "sorry" as I glanced up at her, then over at Kyle, who didn't seem to know what to do with himself either.

The Goddess' violet eyes were shining as she gazed at us with such charisma and sincerity, a bright smile upon her pale and freckled face. "So who wants to hold her?" she asked, and Kyle put out his arms immediately, instinctively, as if he'd been waiting for this moment his whole life. And thank heavens for that, because my whole body felt like goo right now.

The Goddess placed the shining bundle in Kyle's arms, and he held it was an incredible gentleness, the tension in his face melting into the tender affection. In his arms was our baby, this tiny little human with a soft face who looked up at us lazily, without fully opening one of her blue eyes. She was so beautiful I felt like I was going to collapse. I couldn't stop looking at her. It was amazing to me, literally a miracle, and I brought my hands to my mouth in awe and gratitude. She was here now, finally with us, finally home. I loved her so much my heart was throbbing, like it couldn't beat fast enough to accommodate the explosion of feelings I had for this tiny person: love, hope, the fiercest protectiveness, the necessity to cherish, encourage, adore, praise. I looked back up at the Goddess and somehow managed to whisper, "Thank you."

Smiling crookedly, the Goddess winked and said, "Just doin' my job."

"What's her name?" Kyle asked softly, his gaze still transfixed on our baby.

"Oh. Um, shit. Hold on," the Goddess said, then dug around her pockets for a crumbled piece of paper, purple eyes scanning it before illuminating with discovery. "Stella!" she declared, pointing excitedly. "Her name's Stella!"

"Stella…" Kyle echoed, speaking to the baby in the warmest voice. It wasn't quite like any way I'd heard him speak before, but I understood it, because I could hear everything I felt in it.

"Welp," the Goddess began, "I gotta get going. You guys take good care of her, alright?"

"We will," I said, desperate to promise this to her, to get the words out, to profess that taking care of my child would be the one thing I did above all else, forever and all eternity. In this world and the one that followed, I would keep her safe and love her and make sure she had everything she needed, and then I would just love her some more, because she was so precious and bright and lovable, our sweet, starry-eyed little fish.


End file.
